


Our Summer Adventure

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Camping, F/M, Nature, Sexual Content, camp counselors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:13:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8362498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: Castiel runs a children's summer camp and Meg is his newly hired counselor. Though at first she's wary of her, he soon finds out Meg has a way of doing things that might actually change his perspective in a lot of ways.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoctorMongoose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorMongoose/gifts).



> This fic originated as a couple of prompts in my blog and it sort of grew from there. I wrote a third part to give it a proper conclusion and here it is. Enjoy!

Castiel couldn’t say he was sure hiring Meg Masters was a good idea. Yes, her CV was bulky and she seemed to have every possible medical certificate short of actually being a doctor, so yeah, if a kid accidentally choked on their meal, she could come in handy.

The problem was she didn’t seem like the kind of person a parent would want around their kid.

“So,” she said putting a cigarette between her blood red lips. “When do I start?”

“No smoking allowed,” Castiel said, and she grumpily put the lighter away, but kept the cigarette in her fingers. “Mrs. Masters…”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Masters was my mother,” she laughed, and her nose ring glistened in the light. “Call me Meg.”

“Meg,” Castiel started. “You seem to have a lot of experience, but…”

“This is the part where you say _‘please don’t call us, we’ll call you’_?” she asked. She sounded more amused than insulted. “Alright, then. Thank you very much, Mr. Novak.”

They shook hands, and she walked out. Castiel heard the lighter’s click on the hallway, and he sighed in relief. He sure had made the right call.

 

* * *

 

Well, that had been before Anna Milton broke her leg and Hannah Carroll discovered she was pregnant. Castiel had called all the candidates on his list offering them the job for the summer, but they all had either started working elsewhere or went backpacking through South America. Desperate because in two weeks he’d have twenty-eight eight noisy and energetic kinds living in the cabins of his camp (fourteen of which would be girls that would _demand_ a female counselor), Castiel rang Meg Masters.

“Yes, of course, Mr. Novak,” she said. She sounded surprise. “I can be there next week.”

Meg showed up almost as the same time as the kids, in a red Beetle that seemed about to fall apart. Her makeup and torn jeans received a lot of suspicious looks from the parents, but she didn’t saw them under the enormous aviator glasses she was wearing.

“Are you sure about this?” Sam whispered in Castiel’s ear.

“No,” he admitted.

“Geez, look at her hair,” Dean snickered. “Did she forgot to wash the bleach?”

Castiel had to agree, it wasn’t a very flattering hairdo. But he still put on a smile when Meg approached them. “Hello, Mrs…. I mean, Meg. Welcome.”

“Uh, where can I leave this?” she asked, pointing at her duffle bag.

“I’ll show you,” Castiel said, and he gestured Dean to keep welcoming the parents. “You’ll have the cabin all to yourself. Normally we have two female counselors, but this summer we’ve had some… mishaps.”

“Figures,” Meg snickered. Castiel didn’t want to ask what she meant.

“There’s your uniform,” he said, pointing at the pack of clothes over her bed. “I hope is your size. At nine, we’ll be meeting at the canteen for the welcoming breakfast.”

“Okay,” she said.

Castiel stood on the door for a couple more seconds, like he felt he was forgetting something. When she took off the aviator glasses and cast him an interrogating look, he left, internally begging this didn’t end with someone set on fire.

 

* * *

 

The first few days were rough. Castiel had to remind Meg in more than one occasion that she wasn’t allowed to smoke on the camp, and that yes, this was Christian camp, saying grace before eating was absolutely necessary. The girls looked at Meg with suspicion and asked Castiel where Anna, Hannah, Tracy, literally _any of the other counselors,_ were. And that was before Meg and Dean had a fight on the hall.

“Oh, crap,” Sam muttered, as soon as the screaming started gaining intensity. For the first time since Castiel had been administrating the camp, there was absolute silence in the canteen, as all the kids were too entertain listening to the argument.

“No, you listen to me, you entitled jerk!” Meg’s voice carried over quite clearly over the kids’ heads. “You are not going to tell me how to handle this issue!”

“I’ve been on this camp for five years in a row, sweetheart!” Dean replied, just as loudly. “I think I know more than you how things work around here!”

“You obviously don’t, because if you could pull your head out of your…!”

“What’s going on here?” Castiel interrupted them.

“Nothing!” they both replied. But Meg’s cheeks were red, and Dean had his fists tightly clenched.

“To my office!” Castiel ordered. “Both of you, now!”

They marched away pouting like little children. As he left the canteen, Castiel heard one of the kids asking “Sam, what’s an entitled jerk?” and he was glad he stopped them before it escalated into full-blown name-calling.

“What is the problem?” he asked them, shooting them a severe look.

“I was just telling Meg bullying is not allowed in our camp,” Dean explained.

“Yeah? Then why does it keep happening?” Meg asked, crossing her arms.

“Well, even if it happened, telling a kid they should sleep with an eye open is not the way to deal with it!” Dean pointed out.

“Okay, time out,” Castiel demanded. “Let’s start by the beginning. What happened?”

It was hard to keep the conversation civil, but after a lot of suppressed insults, Castiel found out the story: Ava, a rather chubby girl, had gone to Meg crying and telling her that Jake and Larry had called her fat and laughed at her. Meg had responded by telling Jake and Larry that was not a very nice thing to do… okay, she might have mentioned something about body-dumping in the lake and how easy it was to snatch someone from their bed in the middle of the night. Jake and Larry had gone to Dean with the fear of God in their eyes.

Castiel felt a headache starting to grow behind his eyes.

“Dean is right, that is not how we deal with this sort of thing, Meg,” he said. “We explain the kids why their actions were harmful and then we make them apologize.”

Meg raised an eyebrow. “I’ll keep it in mind for the next time.”

The next time came sooner than Castiel was able to predict.

Little Timmy (Castiel had no idea who started calling him that. The boy was emaciated and shy, and wore glasses that made his face look even smaller, so calling him “little” seem appropriate) was hanging by himself near the lake with his videogame (as he usually did) when Paul and other kids got closer and started messing with him. Before Castiel could intervene, Meg was already there. By the time Castiel got close enough to hear what was being said, Paul was pale.

“Now apologize to Timmy,” Meg was ordering.

“I-I’m sorry, Timmy,” Paul stuttered.

“And give him his game back,” Meg said. Paul extended it to Timmy with trembling hands. “There,” Meg smiled in Castiel’s direction while she put a hand on Timmy’s shoulder. “No harm done and we can all be friends, right?”

Paul turned around and made a swift escape followed by his friends. Timmy was looking at Meg with eyes wide open. Without saying a word, he hugged her around the waist and then also ran away with his face red.

“What did you tell Paul?” Castiel asked, not sure he wanted to find out the answer.

“Nothing,” Meg said, blinking innocently. “Just what you told me to tell them.”

Castiel had no way to prove otherwise, because Paul didn’t present any complaints to Dean. In fact, Paul was pretty quiet for a couple of days.

During the following weeks, Ava, Timmy, Todd, Barry and a bunch of other kids who weren’t the camp’s most popular adopted the habit of following Meg around like ducklings. It wasn’t unusual that some of the children got attached to a favorite counselor (half the girls had a crush on Dean, after all, and the other half, on Sam), but it was strange just how tight the group was and how quickly they closed ranks around Meg whenever someone tried to separate them.

On the other hand, those kids that rarely spoke were now laughing and participating in activities. They didn’t spend as much time alone and they seemed to actually enjoy themselves, which could only be a positive thing.

Castiel was conflicted.

“What can I say?” Meg shrugged when he inquired about it one night, after the lights went out and they were heading for their own cabins. “We outcasts have to take care of each other.”

“You’re not outcasts,” Castiel complained. “You’re just…”

“Weird?” Meg offered, with a smile. “Freaks? Shoot. Believe me, I’ve been told worse.”

Castiel couldn’t answer. He was having an epiphany. He stood there, immobile while Meg smirked and walked inside her cabin. Then he ran towards the supplies cabinet and was relieved to find they had enough markers and paper for what he had in mind.

 

* * *

 

“But I thought we were going swimming today!” Barry protested.

“I thought so too,” Meg replied as they walked inside the forest, heading towards the clearing where they did the campfires. “But Cas said he has something especial prepared. That should be exciting.”

The sarcasm in her voice flew over the kids’ heads.

“I don’t like the woods, Meg,” Ava said, pulling the counselor’s shirt. “There are too many mosquitoes.”

Meg made her group sit on a fallen trunk and passed around the insects repellent. When Sam and Dean arrived with the rest of the kids, Meg threw them an interrogating stare, and they both shrugged. Whatever Castiel had planned, he hadn’t shared it with them either.

Finally, Castiel arrived with a backpack that looked rather heavy and looked around with the beam Meg had seen him use when he was about to say grace during dinner or to make a special announcement.

“Good, I’m glad we’re all here,” he said, like they could possibly have somewhere else to be. “It has come to my attention we have a little problem here. It’s nothing bad, though it could be if we don’t talk about it,” he began. “It’s something we all do, sometimes without realizing it: we push aside people we consider different or… weird in any way. Sometimes we even make fun of them, and we don’t realize how hurtful this can be. But I think if we only took the time to see beyond that first impression, we’ll find out those we are wary of are just like us. And they can even make really good friends if we try.”

Meg blinked and looked at Castiel like she was seeing him for the first time. Was he really going there?

“So today, this is what we’re doing,” he added, opening the backpack at his feet and taking out a small paper flower. “We’re going to prepare these flowers, and we’re going to give them to someone we think is different, and then we’ll say something nice about them. For example, Meg,” Castiel took a step towards her and Meg practically jumped off her seat. “Your appearance is… scary. And you smoke. Smoking is bad. But I think you’re a very brave and loyal person, someone we can count on if things are bad. And that makes you someone I would like to call my friend.”

He offered her the flower. Meg felt twenty-eight pairs of little eyes boring into her, and she hoped to all the gods she knew she wasn’t blushing.

“Thanks, Cas,” she muttered taking the flower. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Ava squealed and started clapping, and not long after, the whole camp was doing the same thing. With a beam, Castiel opened the bag and started distributing enough colored paper to cover the woods.

 

* * *

 

To Meg’s surprise (who, granted, was a bit cynical about those things), the exercise actually did wonders for the camp’s bullying issues. By the end of the summer, Ava had become best friends with the girls in her cabin that barely spoke to her before, Timmy was sharing his game console with Paul and Barry overcame his crippling shyness and sang some songs for theater night. Even Meg and Dean had buried the hatchet, after she reluctantly apologized for calling him a jerk and a prick (“When did you call me a prick?” – “Shut up and take the flower!”).

Sooner than she expected, they had the last bonfire, sang some songs accompanied by Dean’s guitar, and the following day, the parents showed up to pick up the kids one by one.

“You’ll stop smoking, won’t you, Meg?” Todd asked her when he hugged her goodbye. “I don’t want you to die of cancer.”

Meg promised him she would, even though she was already thinking about lighting a cigarette as soon as she got inside her car. She took one last look at the cabins (the kids were made to clean them before they left, but it was never a bad idea to double-check), and then headed to Castiel’s office.

“Ah, yes, Meg,” Castiel stood up as he saw her standing on the door. “Have a seat.”

“I’m just here for my payment,” she said, frowning. “I don’t really mean to…”

“Please,” Castiel insisted. “I want to talk to you.”

Meg sat, wondering what she had done wrong now. But what came out of Castiel’s mouth was very different:

“Would you consider coming back next summer?”

“You want me back?” Meg was surprised. “Really? I thought I was a last resource and a troublemaker.”

“Yes to both things,” Castiel confessed. “But, uh… we would never have addressed our bullying problem if you hadn’t come to shake the status quo. So it got me thinking, maybe a little shaking once in a while isn’t all that bad.” He opened his desk drawer and extended Meg her check. “So please, will you think about it?”

Meg thought about the great things the camp had: the lake, the woods that looked like they had been set on fire when the sun sank. She thought about the warmth of the kids’ hugs. She thought about Castiel, kneeling before her and offering her that stupid paper flower…

“I don’t have to think about it,” she said, and smiled at Castiel’s disappointed face. “I’ll be here.”


	2. Chapter 2

Meg stopped several miles away from the camp to light a cigarette. Leaning on the car and staring at the mountains and mountains that surrounded the place, she thought it was rather ironic that she kept smoking even though she loved fresh air so much. Through the years, she’d got rid of all her other bad habits (the drugs, the alcohol, the meaningless hookups) but this one she just couldn’t quit. It was a remnant of what her life had been, just like the tattoo in her lower back.

Meg was truly a testament of what a firm hand and a little love could do for a so-called “troubled child.” Back in her teenage years, she’d run for a long time with the wrong crowd because the right crowd kept brushing her off due to her clothes being old and her never having her homework in time. She’d run with the bad crowd because her mother had bailed on her when she was three and because her father kept drinking until he passed out and was never up to see Meg got on the school bus in time.

Eventually, she’d been caught shoplifting and sent to live with a woman named Ellen Harvelle, who had zero tolerance for Meg’s antics, but a heart of pure gold. She’d set her straight, and Meg still sent her a postcard now and then.

So when it was time for Meg to decide what she wanted to do with her life, it wasn’t really a hard choice: she wanted to help kids like her before they ended in the foster care system or, like it’d happened to some of her friends, dead in some random alley after choking on their own vomit. So she became a nurse surprisingly fast and spent her winters studying to get her Counseling Degree and her summers working on her people’s skills.

The problem was it wasn’t easy to find someone who’d let her work with kids with a background like hers. Meg reckoned she’d have better chances if she died her hair and stopped trying to smoke during job interviews, but that would have been dishonest. If they were going to give her a chance, they should know what they were getting themselves into.

She took a long drag and smiled to herself. Castiel have given her a chance. Out of desperation at first, it was true, but a chance nonetheless. And then he’d asked her to come back. That hadn’t been a hard choice either. She had fallen in love with the sights and the kids, and hell yeah she was going to take any and all opportunities that came her way.

And maybe (just maybe) she’d started harboring a little crush on Castiel during the last couple of weeks of last year’s camp. Not that she planned to act on it. That’d be terrible unprofessional. And besides, she was probably over it by now.

In any case, there she was, enjoying what she knew would be her last cigarette before a six-week abstinence (though interrupted here and there when she could get away with it). The sun was barely rising over the mountains, red and big, announcing a perfect summer day. Meg blew a smoke ring and watched it disappear in the air before tossing her cigarette to the ground and stomping on it. She hummed to herself over the roaring of the motor of her old red Beetle as she headed for the camp once again.

 

* * *

 

“Meg!”

There was a scream and before Meg realized what was going on, she was being tackled by four or five little devil-spawns at the same time.

“Hello!” she laughed as she tried to regain her balance. “Hello, Timmy! Look how you tall you’ve got! Oh, Ava, you cut your hair! I love it!”

“Alright, children, give her some room to breathe,” Castiel’s gravel voice came from behind the wall of small heads surrounding Meg. She looked up to see him politely offering her a hand.

“Hello, Castiel,” she greeted him.

“It’s good to see you again, Meg,” he said, taking Meg’s bag for her after ordering the kids to go play elsewhere. “I see you still have no regards for insignificant things such as punctuality.”

“I swear, I left early this time,” Meg protested. “But you see, this thing happened on the way with my car’s battery…”

“Of course it did,” Castiel chuckled.

He looked much more animated than he’d been the previous year, when he had stared at Meg warily, like he expected her to take out an axe from her bag and start chopping off everybody’s head. Meg was happy he felt relaxed about her now. You know, not because she liked him but because that meant they could be friends. Which was everything they could ever be. Because they worked together. Around snoopy kids.

“I’m afraid you won’t have the cabin for yourself this year,” Castiel was saying when Meg snapped back to reality. “We hired another female counselor, Tracy Bell. She’s worked with us before.”

“That’s alright,” Meg said, although she suppressed a grimace. That meant she wouldn’t be able to sneak out in the middle of the night for a cigarette break.

Castiel seemed to read her mind, because he laughed again and said: “Your secret spot on the pier is undisturbed. But try not to leave the stubs lying around this time.”

“Will do,” Meg said as she climbed the steps of her cabin.

“Oh, and Meg,” he called her again, and she turned around to see him there with his black hair pointing in every direction as usual and his icy blue eyes shining under the sunlight. “It’s good to see you,” Castiel finished, with that ridiculous smile of his.

And Meg found that no; she wasn’t over her crush at all. Not even a little.

 

* * *

 

The first few weeks of the camp went well. Because deep down Castiel was a goddamn hippie, they sang around bonfires to the tune of Dean’s guitar and made paper flowers and all that jazz. Those weren’t Meg’s favorite activities, but she went along with it with a smirk and ran to get extra glue every time one of her kids ran out of it. She considered it a fair price to pay for the chance to trek into the woods or to spend long afternoons swimming in the lake.

“Come on, Todd,” she encouraged a rather scrawny kid trembling on the pier. “The water is only cold when you first step in it.”

Todd took a deep breath and jumped, splashing everyone around them and coming right back up, aided by his water wings with little ducks in them.

“That was great!” Meg said. “A round of applause for Todd!”

All the kids around Todd began clapping, making Todd blush furiously.

“Booo!” another kid screamed. “Only babies wear water wings!”

Suddenly the lake went silent while Meg turned her head around looking for the perpetrator.

“You must be new,” Paul told the kid who had screamed.

There was pity in his eyes and all the kids started whispering while Meg got out of the water and walked towards the bully, who had suddenly gone pale as all his friends scurried away.

“It’s Kenny, isn’t it?” Meg asked, raising an eyebrow while keeping eye contact with the kid.

“Y-Yes…” he stammered, nervously searching for help. The only other camp counselor around was Tracy, who Meg had made sure to instruct to not intervene in those situations.

“Well, Kenny,” Meg said, as she clasped a hand on Kenny’s shoulder. “You and I are going to have a little chat now.”

That was another thing she enjoyed a little more than she should have: putting the bullies in their place. Nobody was messing with her kids.

 

* * *

 

Castiel found her a few hours later in her spot in the pier. Meg loved that spot: she had a perfect view of the moon hanging over the lake, and she was hidden enough from the sight that the kids couldn’t see her smoking from their windows in the cabin.

“I’m keeping the place stub-free, boss,” she said, turning off her cigarette right away.

It was a little too dark to see, but Meg thought she saw Castiel smiling while he sat by her side. The wood creaked under their weight, and a for several seconds, they did nothing but watch the water curving under the breeze and listen to the crickets sing.

“So I heard you gave Kenny a taste of your very special brand of discipline for bullies,” he commented.

“He insulted Todd’s waterwings,” Meg replied, with a shrug. “You know how insecure he is about his swimming.”

She expected Castiel to give her a lengthy lecture on how to treat kids, like he had the previous year, but he just let out a resigned sigh. It was like he knew it just wouldn’t work on Meg.

“What exactly do you tell these kids?” he asked in the end.

“Does it matter?” Meg replied. “They never do it again.”

Castiel shook his head and threw a pebble at the water. It bounced three times before sinking. Meg envied him immediately: that was a trick she’d never got right.

“I question your methods, but I can’t deny your results,” he said in the end. “Well done.”

“Thanks.”

They remained silent once again. Castiel threw another pebble and Meg lit another cigarette. It was weird: Meg never felt comfortable when someone was quiet by her side; she always felt the need to strike up a conversation and keep it going. But not with him. It was actually relaxing to sit there in silence, away from the kids who were probably not sleeping, but exchanging horror stories under the glimmer of their flashlights…

“So what’s the story of this place?” she asked Castiel. “What’s its ghost?”

Castiel frowned, confused for a second. “We are… completely ghost free,” he assured them.

“Oh, come on,” Meg insisted. “Every camp has its ghosts. I’m not going to tell the kids, I promise.”

Castiel chuckled, rubbing his eyes and didn’t answer for a couple of seconds. Meg was about to change the subject when he said:

“My family’s owned this place for decades,” he said. “My father bought it when I was… maybe two years old? I’m not sure. The camp’s always been part of my life. All my brothers and sisters grew out of it when they hit their teenage years; they wanted to go on vacations to ‘normal places’ instead of getting stuck here with all those ‘lame kids’,” Castiel drew air quotes and Meg laughed. “But I always loved it.”

“So your dad left it to you,” Meg guessed.

“Actually, he left it to my brother Michael,” Castiel clarified. “Though he never sets foot here, so for all practical purposes, the camp is mine.”

“And you do a great job,” Meg added. She had no intentions to sucking up to the boss, but it was fair that she told him what she thought. “This place is so peaceful. I’d love to explore the woods more deeply, take some pictures…”

Castiel opened his mouth and then he closed it again.

“What?” Meg asked.

“Nothing,” Castiel said, by his tone of voice was hesitating.

“Tell me or I’ll think it’s something bad,” Meg insisted. That made him smile.

“I was just thinking – after the kids leave, there’ll still be two weeks of summer left,” he said. “Maybe you would like to… camp. In the woods, for some days. I could… guide you, maybe,” he finished with a cringe and a stammer. “Unless you have elsewhere to be, of course.”

Meg looked at him, incredulous. Did he just ask her on a date? Did he just get all flustered asking her on a date? Was this man ever not cute?!

“That, uh… that would be lovely,” she said. Castiel raised his head, and Meg could swear she saw his eyes shining under the moonlight.

 

* * *

 

“I’m telling you,” Claire was muttering to the other girls. “Every night at midnight.”

“You’re just trying to scare us,” Emma replied, and by the way she clutched her covers, Claire was obviously succeeding. “You’re just… you’re trying to get us out of the cabin, and then you’ll play a prank on us…”

Krissy scoffed. With twelve years old, she was the oldest girl in the cabin and the following year she’d be too old to return to the camp, so she felt like she should act accordingly: she was reading a magazine she’d borrowed from Meg about actors and musicians and their scandals and wishing the others would just shut up.

“If you’re so sure you should go see, then,” she challenged them, cockily. Emma pulled the covers over her head, until all that was visible were here wide opened eyes.

“I’ll go see,” Ava said, happily climbing out of her bed. The three other girls stared at her in surprise: Ava was the shortest and chubbiest of them, which also made her the slowest runner, so if there was truly something lurking outside… which there wasn’t, of course. “Meg says there are no ghosts in the camp,” Ava added, turning on her flashlight. “So maybe is a raccoon or something.”

“We’re not supposed to be out of our cabins after lights out,” Emma reminded her, in a broken whisper, but Krissy was already tossing the magazine aside and putting on her sneakers.

“I’ll go with you,” she decided. There was no way in hell this younger girl was going to behave braver than her.

“I’ll go too!” Claire said, who had grown enthusiastic at the idea of seeing some kind of furry animal. The three of them stood on the door and waited for Emma, who hesitantly got up, still dragging the covers with her over her shoulders, like a superhero cape.

“We’re going to get into so much trouble,” she said, worriedly, but the other girls reckoned that was part of the fun.

They tiptoed into the warm, starry summer night. The dry ground crackled under their feet as they marched towards the edge of the woods, flashlights in hand.

“What if we get lost?” Emma asked when they passed the first line of trees. “What if we…”

The other hushed her. They remained immobile and quiet for several seconds, until a rustling sound reached their ears, followed by a hollow, loud sigh.

“That’s it!” Claire muttered to the others. “That’s the sound I keep hearing.”

“That’s no raccoon,” Emma said, holding on to Ava’s arm for protection.

“It could be the wind,” Ava reasoned, but she didn’t sound convinced.

Krissy sensed the other were beginning to get cold feet about this whole adventure, so it was up to her to keep it going.

“Well, if you chickens want to stay here while I go investigating…”

“I’m no chicken!” Claire protested.

“I am,” Emma admitted, trembling and pulling the now dirty covers over her head again. “Can we go back now, please?”

“It’s alright,” Ava assured her, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Nothing’s going to happen while we stay together.”

Emma swallowed loudly, but grabbed Ava’s hand anyway. Ava held Claire’s and Claire held Krissy’s. They advanced forming a chain, taking very careful steps. The hollow sound echoed around them again, and this time Emma wasn’t the only one who quivered.

“Maybe we should go back,” Claire suggested, and Emma started nodding at the idea.

“Just a little further,” Krissy insisted. “It can’t be long now.”

They kept moving, their grips around each other’s hands growing instinctively tighter. The sound – the moan, Krissy thought, it sounded like someone hurt was moaning – came to them again, closer this time, and Krissy knew exactly where it was coming from this time. She pointed her flashlight to the left…

 

* * *

 

Four high-pitched screams pierced the air. Meg and Castiel jumped to their feet and ran across the pier towards the woods. Four terrified little figures came out from behind the trees, waving a flashlight around and yelling unintelligible things. The two shortest one ran straight towards Meg and hid her face on her stomach, crying.

“What happened?” Castiel asked, holding Claire tight while Krissy tried to catch her breath a little behind. “Why are you girls out of the bed?”

Between hiccups and tears, the girls confessed the whole thing.

“I’m sorry, Meg!” Ava sobbed. “We’re never doing that again!”

“You shouldn’t, it was very dangerous!” Meg scolded them. “What if you got lost?”

Emma kept crying, but felt a weird satisfaction at being proven right.

“But that’s not all!” Krissy said. “We saw something!”

“I didn’t see anything!” Emma yelled, in denial.

“No, there was something!” Claire insisted. “ _Someone_ who ran away when we pointed the flashlight at them!”

“You mean, like a person?” Castiel asked, paling. Meg knew exactly what he was thinking: if there was really someone in the woods, it could anyone from a lost trekker to a perverted serial killer trying to snatch their kids. “Are you sure?”

“We saw him!” Ava said. “He was very tall! Like… like… taller than Sam!”

Meg found that really hard to believe. Unless it was a bear. Oh, shit, were there bears in the area?

Dean came running from his cabin, out of breath and holding another flashlight.

“What happened?” he panted. “I heard screaming.”

“Dean, Meg, please escort the girls back to their cabin,” Castiel instructed them, as he picked up Krissy’s flashlight from the ground. “I’m going to see if I can find anything.”

“No!” Claire yelled, tugging Castiel’s shirt. “What if he gets to you?”

“She’s right, you can’t go alone,” Meg said. “At least wait until we come back.”

Castiel was pouting, like he was about to say this was his camp so he was the one who should look into this, but in the end he nodded. Meg and Dean led the girls back, and Dean said he was going to wake up Sam and Tracy. So Meg returned to Castiel, who had an expression of pure resolution. Meg half-expected him to say something along the lines of _“Ain’t nobody gonna mess with my camp!”_

“We need to be very careful,” he said, instead.

“Shouldn’t we wait until Dean gets here?” Meg asked. Like she had invoked his presence, Dean reappeared behind her.

“I couldn’t find them anywhere,” he informed them. “I don’t know where the hell they are.”

“It’s not of import,” Castiel declared. “We need to see if this thing is a threat to the kids. If it’s dangerous, we should move them all to the canteen and ring Ranger Mills.”

Meg had met Ranger Mills the previous year when she went to give the kids a lesson about safety in the woods. She was a petite woman, and Meg had serious doubts she could do anything against a bear.

They advanced among the trees, moving their flashlights left and right until Dean let out a small yelp and something moved among the bushes. All the beams pointed there, and Meg did see something big and hairy, but it was most definitely not a bear.

“Sam?” Dean asked.

“Hey… guys,” Sam said, peaking his head from behind a trunk. Somewhere at his right, there was another movement, and Tracy appeared, with her face flushed and using Emma’s covers to hide her shoulders and her chest. “We, uh… we kinda lost our clothes in all this fumble, could you please…?”

Meg was the first one to burst out laughing and, as she’d later remember it, she didn’t stop laughing for four weeks straight.

 

* * *

 

“Well, look at the bright side,” she told Castiel later. “You’ve got yourself a ghost.”

Castiel sank his head in his arms. After what came to be known as “the incident”, the counselors had spent a long night assuring the kids nothing was wrong, that they hadn’t found anything since it was probably some kind of animal who had been more scared of the girls than they had been of it, and that they could all go back to bed.

That didn’t stop the rumors from spreading like wildfire: apparently now they had a dark, enormous man who stalked the camp on clear nights and had a frightening cry that could only be heard at certain hours. Krissy, Claire, Ava and Emma were heralded as heroes for being brave enough to leave their cabin in the middle of the night, and Castiel was begging that didn’t start a whole new tradition than ended with kids getting lost in the woods.

Meg found the whole thing hilarious, especially the fact that Sam and Tracy spent the rest of the summer avoiding eye contact with the other counselors.

“I should fire them,” Castiel groaned. “I can’t have them behaving like horny teenagers around the kids.”

“They said they wouldn’t do it again,” Meg said, crossing the office and dragging the chair to sit by Castiel’s side. “And the girls didn’t reach puberty early upon accidentally gazing at a penis, so… no harm done!”

“I wished it’d been a serial killer,” Castiel confessed. “That would’ve been much easier to explain to the parents.”

Meg giggled and put a hand on Castiel’s forearm. He raised his head and smiled at her, covering her hand with his. Lately there had been a lot of these little gestures between them, a lot of talking at the pier at night, and a lot of Meg reminding herself she wasn’t going to risk getting caught by a group of curious kids, no matter how much she wanted to do indecent things to Castiel.

But luckily the camp was a just a week away from its end, and then they’d have their much promised excursion. Meg couldn’t wait.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Castiel said, like he had read Meg’s thoughts. “Do you think it is… convenient for us to take two tents?”

“Two tents?” Meg repeated, feeling the little balloon of happiness that swelled on her chest every time she thought about finally being alone with Castiel suddenly popped.

“Well, yes,” Castiel said, a bright shade of red creeping up on his face. “Otherwise we’d be sharing… intimate spaces, and…”

“What, you’re afraid you’re going to see me naked?” she joked, and dragged the chair a little closer to put a hand on his knee. “Or that I’m going to see your junk? It wouldn’t be the first one, let me tell you. In fact, I’ve had a close encounter with another one recently…”

Castiel laughed and looked up at her. Meg was never going to stop being mesmerized at his eyes and how bright they were sometimes.

“I wasn’t trying to…” he began, then cleared his throat nervously. “I don’t want you to think this is the kind of thing I usually do. Inviting people into the woods and… brining only one tent. I…”

Meg leaned closer to him and shut him up with a light kiss.

“You talk too much,” she commented. “You’re much cuter when you’re shutting up.”

Castiel blinked and breathed in sharply, like he couldn’t quite believe that had just happened.

“By all means,” he said. “Have me as quiet as you like.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is way longer than the others, sorry about that xD

“You know, this stopped being cute miles back.”

“Just a little bit longer,” Castiel promised. “We’re almost there.”

Meg stopped on the trail with a sigh. She thought she was a pretty good trekker, but either Castiel had chosen the most complicated path on purpose to test her, or these woods were more traitorous than she had thought. In any case, she was pretty tired: they had left the camp early in the morning and it was past noon now. They had taken short breaks to eat some protein bars and drink some water, but Meg wouldn’t have minded sitting down and having an actual lunch right about then. And despite Castiel’s claims that he knew the terrain like the back of his hand and that he used to come to that spot with his siblings all the time, she was beginning to think maybe they were a little bit lost.

“Are you sure we’re on the right path?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Castiel replied, from several steps ahead. “Just a little more, I promise.”

Meg huffed but picked up the pace again. She had been really looking forward to this for weeks. After the incident with Sam and Tracy, Castiel had thought it best they postpone whatever little flirting they had going on between them. Meg had agreed, even though she would never be as stupid as having sex with Castiel in a clearing near the cabins where their clothes could be stolen by raccoons and they could be caught butt-naked by hypersensitive ten-year-olds. No, if she could have had her way, she and Castiel would have met in his cabin after dark, because there was a door there that people would have to knock before walking in on them, giving them plenty of time to get dressed or hide. But Castiel thought that’d still be “too risky” and “unprofessional”, so Meg had to keep her hands to herself. That didn’t mean they didn’t steal a glance or a kiss in the docks now and then, but that was just skimming the surface of every perverted thing Meg wanted to do to him and with him.

So yes, maybe that was another reason she was impatient and frustrated that they hadn’t arrived to the camp site yet. It had been a torture to harbor a crush for a year, then find out said crush was very much requited and not being able to fully act upon it. She swore if Cas didn’t stop soon…

“We’re here,” he announced a few steps before. Right on time.

They by-passed a mossy tree right into peppered with yellow and violet flowers. It ended on a small natural beach next to the river that flowed down to feed the summer camp’s lake, rushing and rustling as it passed over its rocks.

“Are you kidding me?” she exclaimed, impressed despite herself. “Cas, this place is perfect.”

“Told you,” he said with a smug smirk. He put down his backpack and stretched his shoulders. “So how about you start cooking and I set up the tent?”

“Oh, hell no, we’ve been over this,” she shook her head. “You put me in charge of cooking, you risk burning down the entire woods. So I set up the tent and you cook.”

“As you wish.”

Meg enjoyed the physical exercise of planting the poles on the ground and stretching the cloth over it. She had done it so many times she didn’t even need to check the instruction manual, and even if she had needed it, she still wouldn’t have checked it just to impress Castiel with her expert camping skills.

It wasn't like she was trying to preen or anything... okay, maybe she was. It was just that Castiel had been very proper about the entire thing. After the weeks of teasing and just barely flirting, he had still brought two sleeping bags, even though Meg had done everything but put a neon sign on herself to indicate she very much wanted to jump his bones the minute they were alone. So if she leaned over more times that was necessary and took off her shirt to walk around in her sports bra... that was absolutely on purpose and she really expected Castiel to notice.

On the other hand, once put on, the tent looked rather small. It would be very good to get all cozy and personal in there. So maybe Castiel was thinking about it after all.

In the meantime, she could hear the sizzling of the pan over the fire and a few minutes later, the scent of fried eggs and burgers invaded the air.

"That's bound to bring all the bears to the yard," she said, jokingly.

"There aren't any bears in this area," Castiel replied, serving the burgers. "Some wolves, perhaps, but since it's a no hunt zone, they have plenty of deer to feast upon."

"I wondered why you'd packed a shotgun," she commented.

He had placed two trunks for them to sit on around the small fire and he had even brought plastic utensils with him. What a perfect gentleman.

"What? You thought I was going to kill you and dispose of your body in these woods or something like that?" he asked. And he wasn't all rainbows and puppies all the time underneath that wholesome exterior he put on for the kids. Meg would have to be very careful not to fall in love with him.

"I really wouldn't mind you killing me, as long as you make sure I die happy," she said, with a wink.

He didn't take the bait.

"Do I really look like the serial killer type to you?" he asked instead, tilting his head.

"Well, I've been around, but I never actual met a serial killer," Meg laughed. "So I wouldn't know."

"And how would you know you haven't met a serial killer if you don't know the type?"

Meg thought about it for a moment.

"Touché," she admitted in the end.

Castiel chuckled a little and shook his head.

"You have a very dark sense of humor."

"Says the guy who pointed out this area is very good for disposing of bodies," Meg replied.

"Touché," he repeated, and they laughed while they ate their lunch.

"You know there are plenty of other things we could do up here, all alone," Meg commented, leaning back on her trunk. Her small breasts weren't her more voluptuous quality, but under a certain angle and with the certain accompanying gestures, Meg knew how to make them appearing just as alluring as C cup.

"You're absolutely right," Castiel said, and immediately disappointed her by adding: "I've brought fishing reels, so maybe we can start catching our dinner. Or maybe you would prefer to explore some more? There's no shortage of beautiful sighs. Or perhaps you'd like bird watching or...?"

Meg just listened to him ramble, tapping her finger on the trunk.

"No, that's fine," she said, hoping just exactly how exasperated she was showed on her voice. "You go ahead and fish. I think I'd like to rest and maybe read for a while."

She helped Castiel clean up the remaining of the lunch and stepped into the tent to find her book. She also made sure to put on her bikini and grab a towel with her. She was beginning to doubt exposing more skin was going to get the job done, but she was no ready to give up just yet.

And besides, it was clear Castiel wasn't uncomfortable with exposed skin: he had taken off his shirt before walking into the stream up to his knees, so Meg had a perfect few of his broad shoulders and back muscles. She like what he saw. Castiel wasn't a bulky guy, but he probably could still threw her over her shoulder and carry her wherever he wanted. Just the thought of it make her quiver.

He looked over his shoulder when he heard her coming down near the beach and smiled at her.

"I'm glad you're making yourself comfortable," he commented.

"Oh, yeah, it's really lovely here," Meg said, sincerely.

She set down her towel, stretched her legs and meticulously proceeded to put on sunscreen all over them. It was working: Castiel kept peering over his shoulder and she even saw him swallow a couple of times. The way his Adam's apple bobbed up and down was getting on her nerves. She lied down on her stomach and hooked her heels in the air, making sure her ass was also pretty damn visible.

"Do you mind helping me?" she asked.

"Of course, anything you need."

"Well, I can't really reach my back." She waved the sunscreen's bottle at him. "So... please?"

"Uh..." Castiel threw a hesitant look at his fishing rod, but in the end he decided the odds of something biting wasn't all that high. He left it upon a rock before approaching Meg and kneeling besides her.

"Thank you, you're a sweetheart," Meg said, and deliberately untied the straps of her bikini top.

She was immensely satisfied when his eyes widened a little. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, but then he poured the sunscreen into his palm and gently started rubbing it all the way from her shoulders down to her lower back. Despite her very clear intentions of getting him all hot and bothered, Meg discovered, with infinite frustration, that it was her who was getting uneasy. Castiel has probably spread the cream pretty well by now, but he kept touching her, he kept pressing on the knots of her muscles, massaging them until they came undone under his hands.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Well, I thought after the long walk carrying those backpacks, you'd be a little tense," Castiel replied. His voice had dropped an octave, so it sounded even deeper than before and goddammit, Meg wanted to find out what it sounded like when he was hoarse from screaming her name. She shuffled and the bastard stopped. "Is it...? Would you prefer me not to?"

The only reason Meg didn't scream at him to just fuck her already was because now she had confirmation he was playing her game, she wanted to see how long he could keep it up.

"No, go on," she said, settling her head on her arms and throwing him a languid look. "It feels nice."

So Castiel continued with his massage, pressing and caressing and slowly, almost unwittingly on her part, he got her to relax. He was good. Meg felt like years of tension and bad sleeping suddenly vanished from her body. She let out a little moan of pleasure, completely natural, the intention of mercilessly seduce Castiel gone from her mind. Her head felt light, but her limbs were heavy and her eyelids were beginning to flutter shut and...

"Uh... Cas?"

"Yes?" he asked. His voice was still maddeningly low, but right then Meg wasn't exactly paying attention to that.

"I... think something bit..."

The line was moving frantically and the rod was sliding dangerously down the rock where he had settled it. It was only a matter of time until the fish that was pulling from it would drag it down the river, and not only would they be left dinnerless, Castiel would have to pay Ranger Mills for the equipment when they returned.

All those things seemed to cross Castiel's mind at the speed of light, because he got up with a swear, ran barefoot towards it, and tried to grab it... but his hands were still greasy from the sunscreen, so the rod slid away.

"No, no!" Castiel shouted, as it comically flew through the air describing an arc. Meg was thinking their freshly fish dinner was gone forever, when Castiel did the unthinkable: he jumped into the river and in a couple of powerful strokes, he started swimming behind the rod.

"Cas!" Meg screamed, panic rushing through her veins. The stream was too strong, it would drag him away, he could hit his head against the rock... and she wasn't all that good of a swimmer, did they have something that floated that she could throw at him?

It was over in less than twenty seconds. Less than a meter away, Castiel grabbed the rod, swam towards the river's bank and stood up as soon as he could. He had pulled the line over the water to reveal a marvelously big silver fish flapping and struggling with the hook on its mouth.

"Huh, would you look at that," he commented, as walked back towards Meg. He looked very proud of himself, dripping wet and completely sound. "Seems like we'll have fish for dinner after all."

Meg threw the sunscreen bottle at him. She missed, but only because he dodged at the last second.

"What the hell were you thinking?!" she screamed at him. "Don't do that again! Fuck!"

"I'm sorry!" he said, lowering his eyes to his feet as a scolded child. "I just thought... I'm a very good swimmer, Meg, you had nothing to worry about..."

"Swimming in the pool or in the lake is so not the same thing!" Meg argued. "You could have been seriously injured!"

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I mean, I did take into consideration that I have a nurse with me..."

"Don't try to charm your way out of this," Meg threatened him, rising a finger at him.

"Uh... Meg," he said, and he discreetly averted her eyes from her.

Meg was going to snap at him when she realized that she had left her bikini top on the floor when she'd stood up. She covered her exposed boobs by folding her arms over them. He didn’t deserve to see them right now.

"I swear to God, Cas, if something had happened to you..." she muttered, but for some reason, screaming at someone didn't have the strength when you were practically naked in front of them.

"I'm sorry I scared you," he apologized again, still avoiding to look at her.

"I'm going to change," she announced, because she still wanted to be mad at him, but it was very hard when she was actually so relieved he was okay. She still picked up her bikini from the floor and strutted away without looking at him.

She didn't actually changed, though. She pulled a shirt over her head and sulked inside of the tent for a while so he would have time to think about what he'd done. But she had also forgotten her book outside, so she didn't have anything to do. Cursing, she stepped outside in the end.

Castiel had hanged his soaked khaki shorts and his underwear (white boxers, so that mystery was ruined for her now) from a nearby branch. When Meg approached the fireplace, she noticed he was wearing other shorts, which meant he had changed right outside the tent. What a waste of a good opportunity, but Meg didn't think she would have been able to take full advantage of it while she was still upset.

He was back into the river, the fishing rod still in his hand. He had neatly folded Meg's towel and left it to the side alone with her book and the bottle of sunscreen. The first fish that he had caught laid ready on a plate nearby. There was something disturbing about its dead black eye that sill seemed to observe Meg even from wherever fish went when they died.

"Hello," Castiel said when he heard her move. "Uh... could you... you know how to prepare it or would you rather...?"

"I know how to gut a fish," Meg replied, a little more forcefully than she planned. "Not my first rodeo, Cas."

Castiel made no comment about it. He simply kept fishing, every now and then bringing her another catch while Meg carefully separated the entrails and the bones from the previous one. By the time the sun started coming down and it got too dark to keep fishing, Castiel had caught for beautiful fish in total. Not bad for a single afternoon.

He lit the fire again and Meg brought him the fish before going to clean herself. The river’s water turned black thanks to the blood and the strange angle of the sun on it. A night bird started singing somewhere in the distance. Meg closed her eyes, enjoying the calmness of the evening. It had felt good to get all down and dirty with the fish. It had been a while since she'd enjoyed this type of calmness, and well, she wasn't going to let her own emotions ruin it for her.

Castiel had placed the fish over the grill, and they were already letting out thick black smoke while he carefully kept an eye on them. He gave her a shy little smile when Meg approached him.

"They'll be ready soon," he told her.

"Good," Meg muttered, sitting down on her trunk. She fidgeted with the edge of her shirt and finally spoke up: "Sorry I screamed at you... and threw the bottle at you. I overreacted."

"No, not at all, you didn't," Castiel said, even though they both knew perfectly well she had. "You were right, it was reckless behavior. It's just... I've been coming to this place for ages, with my brothers. We used to swim all day in this river. I know these waters. I didn't even think it."

Meg smiled at him and all was well between them again.

"So you know how to gut a fish but you don't know how to cook it?" he asked, mercifully changing the topic.

"I know how to gut most anything," Meg replied, with a sharp smile. "My dad and my uncle Alistair taught me. They also tried to teach me how to cook most anything, but they failed there."

"They were hunters," Castiel guessed.

"Yeah, pretty good ones," she said. "We used to come to isolated places like this, with my brother, kill a deer... good times."

She tried to leave it there, but Castiel wasn’t having it. She wonder if those blue eyes of him could actually see through her. She almost felt like they did.

“But… then you stopped doing that,” he guessed, correctly.

Meg gave him a bitter grin, and considered leaving it at that. But out there in the wilderness, none of those things really mattered anymore. They were in the past. They couldn’t touch her.

“When my brother was fifteen, he… he grabbed my dad’s shotgun and he put it in his mouth,” she said. “I don’t know why he did that. He didn’t leave a note or anything.”

“Meg…” Castiel muttered, almost as if he was about to tell her she didn’t have to tell him all of that.

“Afterwards, my dad and my uncle had a falling out, and my dad started drinking. A lot.” Meg sighed. “One of my teachers noticed I was struggling and called Child Services on me. I was so angry at her for the longest time. But it might have been for the better, because, you know, even though I bounced from foster home to foster home for a while, it helped my dad cleaned up his act. Eventually. I was already in college by the time he called me to tell me had sobered up. We still see each other on the holidays, he sends me postcards on my birthday. But…”

“It was never the same,” Castiel guessed. Meg was glad he didn’t have to say it out loud for him to understand it. “I know what you mean. My brothers and I, we used to be so close. Mother and Father brought the land by the lake, set up the camp. When we were teenagers, we took a few days after the kids went home. We came here, we snuck beers past mother’s gaze, we talked about girls.” He chuckled to himself, as if the memory was both endearing and a little embarrassing. “And then Father left. To find himself. I guess he must still be looking, because I haven’t heard back from him in a dozen years. The summer after that, I was in my senior year in high school, all my brothers were already in college… and we didn’t come here. And the following year we didn’t, either. And neither the next, nor the next. Whenever I bring up the possibility, they’re just all too busy. So…”

“It’s not the same,” Meg understood. “You want to go back to when things were simpler, but you just can’t.”

Castiel nodded with a sad smile. “Your experiences were a lot harsher and I can’t…”

“Fuck it, we’re not comparing whose misery is worse,” Meg interrupted.

“I never said I was miserable…”

“But you are,” she affirmed, crooking an eyebrow. “When you’re by the lake with the kids, or here, fishing… you look so relaxed and happy. You love this place, these woods. But whenever you talk about your life in Pontiac, you just sound like you would rather be anywhere else but there.”

Castiel laughed again. “Is it that obvious?”

“Glaringly obvious.” Meg leaned over towards his trunk so their faces were almost touching. “Or maybe I just see it because I’m the same. I love it here. I would never go back to civilization if I could.”

“Maybe we don’t have to,” he suggested. “Go back, I mean. We could live here. We have clean water, we can hunt or fish…”

“Oh, it’d be Paradise. Up until the point winter comes and the wolves try to eat us.”

“Well, what’s life without a little excitement?” he said, beaming. But he seemed to realize that plan of living like modern Amish wasn’t going to fly all that well. “But you’re probably right. Mother Nature isn’t always so kind towards us. Look at this place.”

Meg did. The air smelled like flowers and humid earth. The darkened trees seemed to glow underneath the silver starlight, so many stars the sky looked like a black velvet with glitter spread on it, like the art project of one the camp’s kids: messy and clumsy, but infinitely beautiful. There were frogs singing along to the murmur of the river and owls hooting high above their heads, and Meg could almost close her eyes and let it lull her to sleep.

“It’s so overwhelming,” Castiel said, in a reverent whisper.

“Is it? I find it comforting,” Meg replied. “We are nothing to this vastness. All of our struggles, all of our sorrow… they seem petty and stupid when you consider how small and fragile we are.”

“I didn’t take you for an existentialist.”

“I’m a nihilist at best,” Meg replied, sticking her tongue out at him. He shook his head, but he was still beaming.

They extinguished the fire, picked up all of the garbage and hanged it from a tree (“I mean, I don’t think there are any wolves or bears around, but the precautions are never too much”). They brushed their teeth by the stream and went back to the tent.

Meg was sure this would be the time. This would be when they finally stopped talking and got some action. The sleeping bags were close to each other, but the night was actually warm enough that they didn’t necessarily have to sleep inside of them. Meg purposefully took off her bra when she knew that Castiel was already in the tent with her, but instead of coming to give her another wonderful massage, he set down in his sleeping back, as far away from her as the tent allowed it and turned off the lamp.

“Good night, Meg,” he muttered.

Meg stared at the line of his back in the darkness, her frustration growing bigger than ever. She hadn’t been coy or unclear about what she wanted (at least, she didn’t she had been), but still Castiel wasn’t getting the memo. So it was time to take on a more hands on approach.

“M-Meg?” he stammered when she slipped a hand underneath his shirt to touch his stomach. “What are you doing?”

Instead of answering, Meg placed her lips on the side of his neck and sucked a little bit. She was rewarded with a shudder and a sigh, and figured they were off to a good start.

“Meg…” he muttered again when her kissing intensified. His muscles went rigid underneath her fingertips and she stopped. Something definitely wasn’t working here.

“You know, if you don’t want to fuck me, you can just say so.”

She tried not to make it sound passive aggressive, but she had been riding on weeks of sexual frustration, so she wasn’t sure if she succeeded.

Castiel rolled over to face her. He placed a hand on her hip and leaned his head on the other.

“Please, don’t think it’s that,” he muttered.

“Then, what is it?” Meg asked. “Because let me tell you, I made it pretty clear weeks ago that I was down with this and I thought you were too.”

“I was… I am,” he assured her.

“So what’s wrong?” she asked. “Because I’m kind of getting mixed signals here.”

Castiel went quiet. But the hand he had on her hip started slowly wondering up and down her ribs, not quite touching her breasts and not quite placing itself on Meg’s ass. She shuddered and moved an inch closer to Castiel.

“You are extremely beautiful,” he told her. “And extremely smart and we have… so much in common. I like you a lot, Meg, and I very much want to make love to you.”

Meg cringed at the choice of words, but she was glad that at least they were on the same page. She refrained from asking again what the problem was, because she figured Castiel would get to it eventually.

“I… I don’t want to rush this,” he explained. “I enjoy our time together and our talks…”

“And you think all of that is going to end once we’ve fucked?”

“Well, you’ve also stated you’re not looking for anything serious,” Castiel pointed out. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s absolutely your prerogative, but…”

Meg wanted to laugh out loud. So that was what it was.

“Tell me something, Cas,” she said. “In all of those talks with your brothers, they never explained to you the concept of friends with benefits?”

Castiel hesitated, which Meg took advantage of by pushing his shoulder down and passing her leg over his hip to straddle him.

“We can still talk and we can still spend time together,” she said. “That’s the ‘friends’ part. I think we have that pretty much covered.”

“Oh?” Castiel asked, but there was a playful tone in her voice that Meg realized meant she had assuage his doubts once and for all. As if to confirm it, he slid his hand downwards to place it over her butt. “And what would be the ‘benefits’ part?”

Meg leaned over to kiss him. Gently at first, but then he tangled his fingers on her hair and pushed her closer. Meg bit his lip, slowly grinding her hips against his until she felt a growing harness underneath her and he moaned against her mouth. He rolled over with her, so now he was on top, his hands raveling south to caress her neck. Meg arched up her body towards him and he moved away.

“Excuse me,” he muttered before rolling towards his backpack.

“Really?” Meg asked, about to throw something. “What’s wrong now?”

“Nothing,” Castiel said as he rummaged through his stuff. “I just thought it’d be… convenient to have the condoms at hand before we go any further.”

Meg sat up. “You brought condoms?” she asked, barely containing her laugher.

“Well, I like to be prepared.” Castiel turned towards her, the box of Trojans in his hand.

Meg opened her mouth, but everything that came out of it was a chortle. She grabbed Castiel’s shirt and pulled him down with her again.

 

* * *

 

Meg couldn’t say what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. Castiel took his time with her. He let her remove his shirt and his boxers, but he didn’t respond to her come-hithers or her aggressive pushes or biting. Instead, he slowly and softly kissed every inch of her neck, while his fingertips drew lazy circles in her nipples until she was wriggling and moaning underneath him, until it felt like her skin was on fire and he was the only thing that could dose it off.

“Castiel…”

He shushed her and moved his mouth further down. He sucked her already erected nipples while his right hand gently slid between her legs. Meg screamed and raised her hips, but she realize there was no point in hurrying him up. So instead, she closed her eyes and _let him_. She let him bathe her in kisses and small bites, she let her sink two fingers into her while his thumb teased her clit. It was gentle and studied, like Castiel had long considered the best way to please her and had reached the conclusion the type of fast and furious sex Meg had been hinting at just wouldn’t do.

But she could definitely get used to this.

A loud curse escaped her when he moved away.

“This is torture,” she said, pressing her legs together to get some sort of relief. “Cas, I swear to God…”

“Good things come to those who wait, Meg,” he commented, as he slowly (too slowly for her taste) he unwrapped the condom and rolled it down his cock. “What’s the hurry? We have all night.”

The hurry was that Meg had been fantasizing with that moment for longer than she’d like to admit. She had dreamed about riding him into oblivion, she had imagined his blue eyes dilated and fixed on her, his body aching underneath hers, begging her for release….

And now that they were actually there, it turned out to be the other way around. She was the one who was at his mercy, wet and desperate and _begging him_. And the worst part was that the bastard must have known the effect it was having on her, because she could feel his smug grin when he finally came back to cover her. She could feel it in his lips when he leaned over to lap the sweat forming in the crook of her neck.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I thought that was the point of the benefits, Meg,” he commented. Meg let out a groan of frustration, but she threw her arms around his neck and pushed him down nonetheless. “For us to… uh, enjoy ourselves.”

“You know what I mean,” Meg said, and she fiercely sank her nails in his scalp. Castiel shuddered with pleasure. He pressed against her again and Meg opened her legs for him and hooked her feet around his hips, without a second of further hesitation.

And even then he took his time, pulling almost all the way out before thrusting into her again. Meg swore revenge, but once again, she closed her eyes and let the pleasure build up in her lower stomach, she let him muttered her name in her ear and leave a trace of wet kisses around her collarbone. She held onto his back, his broad shoulders that she had lust after for so long, and enjoyed the feel of his skin and his muscles. He wasn’t bulky, but Meg had no doubt in her mind he was strong enough to pick her up and carry her wherever he pleased. It was an exciting thought. She usually liked being in control, she liked to be the one taking the initiative, but in less than twenty minutes, Castiel had done away with that expectation and it was him who was marking the rhythm, him who was making this last just like he said he would.

And Meg was willing to make that exception for him.

Hell, she was willing to make a ton of exceptions for him that she wouldn’t make for any other guy.

The revelation came to her at the same time her orgasm overflowed her body, shaking her to the core. She screamed out his name, holding onto his back for dear life as the waves of her pleasure invaded her mind, obliterating every semblance of coherent thought. She didn’t know how long it lasted – logically, it must have been a few seconds, but she felt it much longer than that. Her limps gave out and fell heavily against the sleeping bag extended underneath them while her heart pounded loudly in her chest, her breathing agitated and faltering. When she came to, Castiel was still inside her, but his movements had become less deliberate, rusher. Meg laughed at him coming undone and stretched her hand towards his butt. She squeezed at the same time she left a kiss on his damp hair and a second later, Castiel’s body got stiff as he left a single last kiss on Meg’s shoulder.

They laid there, happy and satisfied, not saying a word for a long time. After a while, he moved away again, but this time, Meg didn’t protest. She was covered in sweat and she would grow cold any second now, so she felt up in the dark and found his shirt. She pulled it over her head before Castiel returned to the nest the sleeping bags formed. He didn’t comment on it, but he did placed a hand around Meg’s hip.

“Hey,” he muttered, pulling her close to his chest.

“Hey,” she replied, and then chuckled to herself when he sank his nose on her hair. “You’re cuddly, huh?”

“Would you prefer I…?”

“No,” Meg said, and that was another exception she was making for him. “It’s fine.”

Castiel’s fingers traced circles on her back, soothing her until her head fell on his chest, the exhaustion of the day and the sex finally catching up with her.

 

* * *

 

She woke up late the following the day to the rumble of Castiel’s snoring. They had rolled away from each other during the night, but she was still using his bicep as a pillow. She sat up slowly to not wake him up and watched his face in the golden light seeping in through the tent’s fabric. He had a smirk on his lips and his hair all ruffled in different directions. There was a shade of fuzz growing in his cheeks and Meg wondered what it would feel like to have that rough touch between her legs. Her heart skipped a beat, but before she could let her mind go to the gutter again, she picked up her travelling kit and crawled out of the tent.

Castiel followed her when she had just finished cleaning herself and was starting the fire to make breakfast that day.

“Good morning,” his gruff voice floated to her along with the rustle of his steps behind her.

“Hey,” she replied. He knelt on the trunk behind her and left a kiss on her neck that sent a shiver down her spine. “How are you?”

“I’m aching all over,” he confessed. “And some wildcat must have sneaked into our tent last night, because I have scratches up and down my back.”

“Well, if you had given her what she wanted in the first place, maybe she wouldn’t have had to scratch you like that,” Meg replied, turning her head with a crooked eyebrow at him. Castiel beamed at her. It was so amazing, how his face lit up when he did that.

“I would kiss you, but I’m afraid my morning breath would forever kill my chances of having a repeat of last night.”

“Well, go get that fixed then,” Meg ordered him. “I think I might be able to get the toasts ready for when you come back.”

She burned the toasts, but only a little bit. She argued in the face of a laughing Castiel that she still should get points for trying.

Afterwards, it was a perfect day. The sun was bright, there was a pleasant breeze blowing, and now that they had scratched the itch, they could focus on doing other things besides each other. Castiel proposed they trekked upstream to bird-watch, and Meg agree, even though she couldn’t give less of a fuck about the birds. She liked the exercise of walking and she liked watching Castiel’s back, so she stayed behind a lot while he stopped and pressed the binoculars against his eyes.

“Look, Meg!” he exclaimed with the excitement of a little child. “It’s an indigo bunting!”

“I’m fine,” Meg said when he tried to hand her the binoculars.

“But you have to see it,” he insisted, beckoning her to come closer. “Come, before it flies away.”

Meg groaned but agreed, and in fact, she was surprised about how blue that particular bird was. Its feather just seemed to glimmer underneath the light as it preened and tweeted on a branch above their heads.

“Okay, that’s kind of cute,” Meg admitted, lowering the binoculars. Castiel’s posture went rigid and he looked away. “What?” she asked, and a second later, she realized she had been bending over a little. “Were you checking out my ass?”

“No,” Castiel lied.

“You totally were.” Meg grinned at him and grabbed him by the shirt. “It’s okay, you know? I check out your ass all the time.”

“Oh, do you?” he asked, tilting his head.

Meg pulled him down for a kiss and she figured they must have scared all the birds in miles around. Castiel had blades of grass caught in his hair on the way back, but Meg made no attempt to pick them out until they were back in the camp, just she could have an excuse to get him to lean his head in her lap. They took the afternoon with ease: they laid in their beach and read until the sun started going down. Meg had brought mystery novels with bloody murders and a hardened detective trying to figure them out, Castiel brought a book about a reincarnating dog. He cried at the end, and he was so sincerely touched, Meg couldn’t even make fun of him.

“See? That’s why I’m more of a cat person,” she commented while he blew his nose and wiped his tears away.

“I like cats too,” he said, his voice gruffer than usual. “I actually wish I could have some sort of pet in my apartment. It would make it less lonely.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I live alone too, and sometimes coming home to all that silence is a bummer.”

She leaned on his shoulder while they watched the sunset and he passed a hand over hers to bring her closer.

“But this is nice,” he said, as he played with her hair.

“This is incredibly nice,” she agreed.

They ate the rest of the fish (they still had two nights ahead, so they decided to stay by the river and get some more the following day) and crawled back into the tent. This time there was no hesitation, no dilation: Castiel firmly put a hand around her waist and started kissing her, but Meg was having none of that.

“Fair is fair,” she said as she pinned his hand above his head and straddled him. “I get to top tonight.”

 

* * *

 

They had one day and one night left before they had to go back to civilization, lest Ranger Mills would set out a search party for them. Meg could have spent an entire week, hell, an entire month just lazing around with him, but there were actual lives they had to return to eventually and she didn’t know if she would see Castiel before the following summer and they would have the chance to make another escapade. So she was decided not to waste any time.

He gave out the most delicious moan when he woke up to her mouth on his cock.

“Meg… you don’t have to…”

Meg hollowed her cheeks and gave a gentle suck. That shut him up. When she was done and demanded a quid pro quo, he was more than happy to oblige.

So that was a fun morning. The sun was up in the sky and Meg was happily dozing off with his head on her stomach, but then he placed a kiss right above his navel and rolled over to leave the tent.

“No, come on,” she protested, weekly trying to catch him by the brim of his swimming shorts. “I’m sure there are other fun things we can try still.”

“I’m sure there are,” he replied. “But the fish needs catching if we want to have a proper sendoff lunch and dinner to this lovely weekend.”

“Can’t we snack on something else?” Meg suggested, creeping her fingers up his spine. She was satisfied with his shivering, but not with the fact he was still strong enough to resist her insinuation.

“Perhaps we can snack on again later,” he said, catching her hand and leaving on her knuckles. “Now it’s fishing time.”

Meg groaned and decided to take a nap. It didn’t last, though: the air in the tent was becoming suffocating, and besides, she was missing the spectacle of Castiel fishing without his shirt. So finally, she put on her bikini again and left the tent for the small beach.

“How’s Death River treating you?” she asked, as she laid out her towel again.

“It’s not a dangerous river, I’ve told you,” he protested, looking at her over his shoulder.

“Still not taking my chances.” She shrugged.

Castiel stretched his hand at her. Meg pretended she didn’t see it, but when he beckoned her to come closer, she huffed and marched towards him. She didn’t want him to think she was scared of the damn thing or anything like that.

“Dip your feet inside,” he encouraged her. “Come on.”

Meg squeezed his hand maybe a little tighter than she should have to maintain her brave girl façade, but she did as he told her. She stepped into the river and the water licked her ankles and her calves as she walked to be on the same level as him. To her surprise, the bottom was mostly sand and the coldness of the water sent a refreshing shiver up her spine.

“Okay,” she agreed, despite herself. “This isn’t so bad.”

“You don’t like moving waters, do you?”

“Nope,” Meg admitted, without any qualms about it. “Pools and lakes are a-okay, but rivers and seas freak me out.”

Castiel didn’t laugh at her for it, even though he had every right to do it.

“Well, you can trust this river,” he promised.

And he did that thing again when he was looking at her and completely and utterly forgot to watch for the fish he was supposed to be catching.

“Cas!”

Castiel looked at the rod and let go of Meg’s hand to try to reel the fish in. Only he didn’t stand as firmly as he could and he pulled too hard. The fish came out describing an arch in the air at the same time he lost his grounding. Meg leaned to avoid receiving a face full of fins and scales and inadvertently crashed against Castiel. Gravity did the rest for both of them.

Next thing Meg knew, they were both sitting on the cold water, soaking wet. The rod was somewhere in the beach with the fish jumping and convulsing, with the hook still in its mouth. Castiel looked at it, looked at them both, and promptly burst into laughter.

“That wasn’t funny,” Meg protested, trying to stand in the slippery surface. “Cas, stop laughing and help me stand up.”

What he did instead was grab her hand and yank her down to the water again. Somehow he maneuvered her into his lap and then kissed her to hushed her complains.

Meg discovered there were very few things as satisfying as a make out session on a river bank.

 

* * *

 

Castiel did the promised snacking that night. When Meg kissed him, she could taste herself in his mouth and the feeling sent shivers down her spine.

“Do you want me to…?”

“Meg, as amazing as this entire weekend has been, I’m pretty spent,” he confessed, between chuckles. “I think we should try to catch some sleep. We have a long trek back tomorrow.”

“Oh, yeah, tomorrow,” Meg groaned. “Back to the civilization and all that.”

She didn’t feel like being reminded of that. Especially when she was so happy and well fucked.

She also didn’t want to think about what it would mean for them. But she still sank her face in his chest and snuggled against him. Castiel carefully untangled the knots in her hair.

And Meg hated to be that chick, she really did, but she still had to know.

“So… what happens now?”

“That is a very good question,” Castiel replied with a sigh.

He went quiet for a while. Meg took a deep breath.

“It’s okay if you don’t want a repeat of this,” she told him. “We had a good time, now we go our separate ways. We see each other next summer.”

She couldn’t see his face in the dark, but the way he shifted underneath revealed he wasn’t entirely comfortable with that idea.

“Perhaps that’s for the best,” he whispered anyway.

And even though he was agreeing with her, Meg found the choice of words rather odd.

“Wait, why wouldn’t it be for the best?”

“No reason,” he said. He stayed quiet again, his fingers lazily resting in the back of Meg’s hair. “We really shouldn’t see each other all that often. Maybe that’s not the case for you, but to me, it… it might habit forming.”

“That’s a weird way to put it.” Meg frowned. “What do you mean?”

She should have left it there. But she had said the words out loud and the answer… also wasn’t what she was expecting.

“I’m at extreme risk of falling in love with you,” Castiel explained, matter-of-factly. “After this weekend, I’m already more attached to you than I probably should be. And that can be a problem, because you said you’re not interested in romance. And even if you were, you have your job and I have mine… long distance relationships aren’t ideal.”

Slowly, Meg sat up, escaping from the warmness of his embrace as if she could escape from his confession as well. She turned his back to him and covered her mouth. She had no idea why the idea of him falling for her shook her to the core in that manner. Yes, they got along better than she had with a guy in ages, and the ex was great, and everything was great, but…

“Please, do say something, Meg,” Castiel requested in a whisper, stopping the spiraling thought inside of Meg’s agitated mind.

“You… you’ve really given this a lot of thought, huh?” she commented nervously. Her joke fell flat.

“I had to. I’ve been probably crushing on you from the first year you came to work at the camp,” Castiel admitted. “And when you finally showed interest in me, I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”

“I’m gonna go out for a smoke,” Meg decided, suddenly. She dragged her backpack closer and fished the cigarettes from a side pocket. She also took Castiel’s hoodie, because at this point she doubted very much he was going to complain about it.

“Very well.”

She didn’t even look at him as she crawled out of the tent. Her hand trembled while she put the cigarette in her lips and held it to the lighter. It was a strange thing. She had been so busy playing mouse and cat with Castiel she had completely forgotten her fix of nicotine. But now… well, she needed something to do, some sort of excuse not to be in that tent and feel like she had lead the poor guy on.

But the truth was, she really hadn’t. She had made it clear from the beginning this was just an adventure, something entirely physical, something she didn’t have any interest in taking beyond that. Castiel was the one who couldn’t stick to the rules, who wanted something more but still had jumped in knowing full well he wasn’t going to get it.

And for a second, she grew angry at him. Why did he have to complicate a lovely weekend with talks about love and relationships and such? Why did he have to remind her he was the best guy in the world and she had no business messing with him?

Because that was what was going to happen. Castiel was going to be a saint to her, he was going to be the best boyfriend someone could ask for and she was going to mess it up. Sometime, somehow. Like she had messed up everything in her life since she was fourteen.

She pressed the cigarette against the bark of a tree and returned to the tent. Castiel had rolled over and was quietly snoring now. How the hell could he sleep after everything they had said, and with everything they hadn’t still hanging over them, it was beyond Mg. But as she settled by his side (leaving a few inches in between, because she no longer fell like she had the right to sleep against the warmness of his skin), she found that it wasn’t as hard as she had thought.

 

* * *

 

They woke up early the next morning, had a frugal breakfast of food and tea, dismounted the tent and packed everything up. They exchanged a few words, and mostly they were the “pass me that thing” or “where did you leave this other thing?” kind. They barely looked at each other until they were ready to go. Meg let Castiel walk ahead of her again, and for a very long while, the only sound they heard was the chirping of the birds and the rustle of their feet on the ground, until she couldn’t hold it any longer.

“Is that why you didn’t want to touch me? On the first day, is that why you didn’t even want to…?”

Castiel stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. She didn’t have to clarify what she meant.

“Yes,” he confessed, as if there was no point in denying it. “I told you as much.”

“Well, I don’t think I got the implication until now,” Meg groaned.

Castiel showed her an apologetic smile and placed his backpack down.

“Let’s take a break,” he proposed. He took an energy bar and passed it on to Meg.

Meg munched on it, but she didn’t really enjoy the flavor. Castiel stared at his for a while, before he lifted his blue eyes at her again.

“Please, don’t be mad at me,” he begged. “I didn’t mean to make uncomfortable…”

“I’m not mad at you,” Meg stopped him. “I’m mad at myself.”

Castiel tilted his head, confused. Meg toyed with the plastic wrapper, trying to get her thoughts in order.

“I was the one who brought it up,” she explained. “If I hadn’t said anything, we could have left this place without even having to think about it.”

It was a lame excuse and she knew it. Castiel knew it as well, because he shook his head.

“It wouldn’t have changed much, Meg. As you said, I put a lot of thought into this.”

“Then why did you do it? If you knew…”

“You were worth the risk.”

The words came out so simple, so honest, that Meg really didn’t know where to go from there. He knew what he was getting into. She didn’t have a thing to feel guilty about. It was up to her, and whatever she decided she wanted to do, whether it was never seeing each other again or keep it in suspense until next summer or… she knew he was going to accept it. Without any blaming or screaming or tears, he was quietly and simply going to accept it. Like he had accepted coming with her into the woods in the first place.

“Goddammit,” she muttered, because really she had nothing else to say.

Castiel smiled at her, but his eyes looked dim, like the blue light that always animated them had gone away for a while.

“Let’s keep going,” he said, putting away his half-eaten protein bar. “Ranger Mills expects us before sundown and if we’re not there, she might organize a search and rescue party and I wouldn’t want to bother…”

“Maybe we could.”

It didn’t come out as delicately as it probably could have. She’d just blurted out the words without thinking, without even taking into account that he had already changed the topic, perhaps precisely because he didn’t fell like discussing it anymore.

“Maybe we could…?”

“Try,” Meg clarified, and she started speaking very fast, before her insecurities could catch up to her, before she could think about it all that much. “Try to make it work, I mean. It’s not really that much of a distance. We live, what, five hours away from each other? We could visit on long weekends, we could… I don’t know, see where it goes.”

He blinked at her, lips parted as if he wasn’t sure he understood what she was saying.

“You… you really want that?” he asked, his face slowly lightening up.

“I wouldn’t be saying it if I didn’t want it,” Meg said. And at least of that much she was sure. “Cas, I… I think you’re worth the risk, okay?”

He kept staring at her, and it was really unnerving.

“Do say something,” she groaned.

Castiel grabbed her arm and pulled her up to his feet. Next thing Mg knew, his mouth was crashing against hers, hungry, insisting, biting her lips, moving his tongue over hers. He hadn’t kissed her like that in the entire weekend, and Meg was almost baffled by the strength, by the passion he put into it, how engulfing it was.

When he let go of her, they were both out of breath and Meg had to hang on to his neck, her knees trembling slightly. He had been holding back, and he must have known she was thinking that, because he smiled at her and pressed his forehead against hers.

“I would like that very much.”


End file.
